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Who is Ireland's Enemy..Not Russia, France nor Austria — Ireland’s Cry of Wrath and Memory

Not Russia, France nor Austria is one of the fiercest patriotic poems ever composed in the Irish tradition — a thunderous indictment of England’s centuries of conquest and cruelty in Ireland. Written in the voice of the dispossessed and the dead, it spares no detail and softens no truth.

The poem begins with a striking declaration: Ireland’s suffering did not come from distant empires. “Not Russia, France nor Austria — they forged for her no chains.”
Her destroyer was closer to home. Across each verse, the poet calls out the long litany of wrongs: the murder of Shane O’Neill, the poisoning of Owen Roe, the slaughter of priests, children, and innocents, and the burning of villages from Clare to Donegal. It’s a roll call of grief stretching over “twice four hundred years,” until, as the poet writes, “every blade of Irish grass was wet with blood and tears.”

Yet behind the rage lies remembrance — a vow that Ireland’s dead still speak through her living. The poem ends not in despair but in summons:
“Rise up, oh dead of Ireland, and rouse her living men… the chance will come to us at last to win our own again.”

That closing vision transforms lament into prophecy. It’s not just a cry for vengeance — it’s a promise of renewal, that every sacrifice and every martyrdom would one day bear fruit.

When read aloud, Not Russia, France nor Austria feels like a storm breaking over centuries of silence — a reckoning in verse. It stands as a reminder that Irish history is not forgotten in archives or books, but still burns in the hearts of those who sing, remember, and refuse to forget.


     

LYRICS

Not Russia, France nor Austria;
They forged for her no chains,
Nor quenched her hearths,
Nor razed her homes,
Nor laid her altars low,
Nor sent her sons to tramp the hills
Amid the winter snow.
Who murdered kingly Shane O'Neill?
Who poisoned Owen Roe?
Who struck Red Hugh O'Neill down?
Who filled our land with woe
By night and day - a thousand times,
In twice four hundred years -
Till every blade of Irish grass
Was wet with blood and tears
Who spiked the heads of Irish priests
On Dublin Castle's gate?
Who butchered helpless Irish babes,
A lust for blood to sate?
Who outraged Irish maidenhood,
And tortured aged sires,
And spread from Clare to Donegal
The glare of midnight fires?
Who scourged our land in Ninety-Eight,
Spread torment far and wide,
Till Ireland shrieked in woe and pain,
And Hell seemed fair beside?
Who plied the pitch-cap and the sword,
The gibbet and the rack?
Oh God! that we should ever fail
To pay those devils back.
Who slew the three in Manchester,
One grim November dawn,
While 'round them howled sadistically
The Devil's cruel spawn?
Who shattered many a Fenian mind
In dungeons o'er the foam,
And broke the loyal Fenian hearts
That pined for them at home?
Not Germany nor Austria,
Not Russia, France nor Spain
That robbed and reaved this land of ours,
And forged her heavy chains;
But England of the wily words –
A crafty, treacherous foe –
'Twas England scourged our Motherland,
'Twas England laid her low!
Rise up, oh dead of Ireland!
And rouse her living men,
The chance will come to us at last
To win our own again,
To sweep the English enemy
From hill and glen and bay,
And in your name, oh Holy Dead,
Our sacred debt to pay!

Location: Ireland

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